But just then a soft voice interrupted them. It was M. Venot, and he had come and seated himself behind them, as though anxious to disappear from view. Bending forward, he murmured:
“Why despair? God manifests Himself when all seems lost.”
He was assisting peacefully at the downfall of the house which he erewhile governed. Since his stay at Les Fondettes he had been allowing the madness to increase, for he was very clearly aware of his own powerlessness. He had, indeed, accepted the whole position—the count’s wild passion for Nana, Fauchery’s presence, even Estelle’s marriage with Daguenet. What did these things matter? He even became more supple and mysterious, for he nursed a hope of being able to gain the same mastery over the young as over the disunited couple, and he knew that great disorders lead to great conversions. Providence would have its opportunity.
“Our friend,” he continued in a low voice, “is always animated by the best religious sentiments. He has given me the sweetest proofs of this.”
“Well,” said Mme du Joncquoy, “he ought first to have made it up with his wife.”
“Doubtless. At this moment I have hopes that the reconciliation will be shortly effected.”
Whereupon the two old ladies questioned him.
But he grew very humble again. “Heaven,” he said, “must be left to act.” His whole desire in bringing the count and the countess together again was to avoid a public scandal, for religion tolerated many faults when the proprieties were respected.
“In fact,” resumed Mme du Joncquoy, “you ought to have prevented this union with an adventurer.”
The little old gentleman assumed an expression of profound astonishment. “You deceive yourself. Monsieur Daguenet is a young man of the greatest merit. I am acquainted with his thoughts; he is anxious to live down the errors of his youth. Estelle will bring him back to the path of virtue, be sure of that.”
“Oh, Estelle!” Mme Chantereau murmured disdainfully. “I believe the dear young thing to be incapable of willing anything; she is so insignificant!”
This opinion caused M. Venot to smile. However, he went into no explanations about the young bride and, shutting his eyes, as though to avoid seeming to take any further interest in the matter, he once more lost himself in his corner behind the petticoats. Mme Hugon, though weary and absent-minded, had caught some phrases of the conversation, and she now intervened and summed up in her tolerant way by remarking to the Marquis de Chouard, who just then bowed to her:
“These ladies are too severe. Existence is so bitter for every one of us! Ought we not to forgive others much, my friend, if we wish to merit forgiveness ourselves?”
For some seconds the marquis appeared embarrassed, for he was afraid of allusions. But the good lady wore so sad a smile that he recovered almost at once and remarked:
“No, there is no forgiveness for certain faults. It is by reason of this kind of accommodating spirit that a society sinks into the abyss of ruin.”
The ball had grown still more animated. A fresh quadrille was imparting a slight swaying motion to the drawing room floor, as though the old dwelling had been shaken by the impulse of the dance. Now and again amid the wan confusion of heads a woman’s face with shining eyes and parted lips stood sharply out as it was whirled away by the dance, the light of the lusters gleaming on the white skin. Mme du Joncquoy declared that the present proceedings were senseless. It was madness to crowd five hundred people into a room which would scarcely contain two hundred. In fact, why not sign the wedding contract on the Place du Carrousel? This was the outcome of the new code of manners, said Mme Chantereau. In old times these solemnities took place in the bosom of the family, but today one must have a mob of people; the whole street must be allowed to enter quite freely, and there must be a great crush, or else the evening seems a chilly affair. People now advertised their luxury and introduced the mere foam on the wave of Parisian society into their houses, and accordingly it was only too natural if illicit proceedings such as they had been discussing afterward polluted the hearth. The ladies complained that they could not recognize more than fifty people. Where did all this crowd spring from? Young girls with low necks were making a great display of their shoulders. A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a coat of mail. People’s eyes kept following another lady smilingly, so singularly marked were her clinging skirts. All the luxuriant splendor of the departing winter was there—the over-tolerant world of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of enjoyment. The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.
“Very smart—the countess!” La Faloise continued at the garden door. “She’s ten years younger than her daughter. By the by, Foucarmont, you must decide on a point. Vandeuvres once bet that she had no thighs.”
This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and Foucarmont contented himself by saying:
“Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is.”
“Jove, it’s a happy thought!” cried La Faloise. “I bet ten louis she has thighs.”
Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the crowded doors. Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the winter, and he was now dividing himself between the singer and the countess, but he was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get rid of one of them. Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused him more than she. Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one: her tenderness for him was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove Mignon to despair.
“Listen, we want some information,” said La Faloise as he squeezed his cousin’s arm. “You see that lady in white silk?”
Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge to satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery, dating from the days when he was just fresh from his native province.
“Yes, that lady with the lace.”
The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.
“The countess?” he said at last.
“Exactly, my good friend. I’ve bet ten louis—now, has she thighs?”
And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking whether the countess slept with anyone. But Fauchery, without showing the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him.
“Get along, you idiot!” he said finally as he shrugged his shoulders.
Then he shook hands with the other gentlemen, while La Faloise, in his discomfiture, felt rather uncertain whether he had said something funny. The men chatted. Since the races the banker and Foucarmont had formed part of the set in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana was going on much better, and every evening the count came and asked how she did. Meanwhile Fauchery, though he listened, seemed preoccupied, for during a quarrel that morning Rose had roundly confessed to the sending of the letter. Oh yes, he might present himself at his great lady’s house; he would be well received! After long hesitation he had come despite everything—out of sheer courage. But La Faloise’s imbecile pleasantry had upset him in spite of his apparent tranquility.
“What’s the matter?” asked Philippe. “You seem in trouble.”
“I do? Not at all. I’ve been working: that’s why I came so late.”
Then coldly, in one of those heroic moods which, although unnoticed, are wont to solve the vulgar tragedies of existence:
“All the same, I haven’t made my bow to our hosts. One must be civil.”
He even ventured on a joke, for he turned
to La Faloise and said:
“Eh, you idiot?”
And with that he pushed his way through the crowd. The valet’s full voice was no longer shouting out names, but close to the door the count and countess were still talking, for they were detained by ladies coming in. At length he joined them, while the gentlemen who were still on the garden steps stood on tiptoe so as to watch the scene. Nana, they thought, must have been chattering.
“The count hasn’t noticed him,” muttered Georges. “Look out! He’s turning round; there, it’s done!”
The band had again taken up the waltz in The Blonde Venus. Fauchery had begun by bowing to the countess, who was still smiling in ecstatic serenity. After which he had stood motionless a moment, waiting very calmly behind the count’s back. That evening the count’s deportment was one of lofty gravity: he held his head high, as became the official and the great dignitary. And when at last he lowered his gaze in the direction of the journalist he seemed still further to emphasize the majesty of his attitude. For some seconds the two men looked at one another. It was Fauchery who first stretched out his hand. Muffat gave him his. Their hands remained clasped, and the Countess Sabine with downcast eyes stood smiling before them, while the waltz continually beat out its mocking, vagabond rhythm.
“But the thing’s going on wheels!” said Steiner.
“Are their hands glued together?” asked Foucarmont, surprised at this prolonged clasp. A memory he could not forget brought a faint glow to Fanchery’s pale cheeks, and in his mind’s eye he saw the property room bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty bric-a-brac. And Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever use of his suspicions. At this moment Muffat was no longer suspicious, and the last vestige of his dignity was crumbling in ruin. Fauchery’s fears were assuaged, and when he saw the frank gaiety of the countess he was seized with a desire to laugh. The thing struck him as comic.
“Aha, here she is at last!” cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a jest when he thought it a good one. “D’you see Nana coming in over there?”
“Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!” muttered Philippe.
“But I tell you, it is Nana! They’re playing her waltz for her, by Jove! She’s making her entry. And she takes part in the reconciliation, the devil she does! What? You don’t see her? She’s squeezing all three of ’em to her heart—my cousin Fauchery, my lady cousin and her husband, and she’s calling ’em her dear kitties. Oh, those family scenes give me a turn!”
Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the astonished look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at her father and mother. Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of the hand with the journalist. Together they made up a smiling group, while M. Venot came gliding in behind them. He gloated over them with a beatified expression and seemed to envelop them in his pious sweetness, for he rejoiced in these last instances of self-abandonment which were preparing the means of grace.
But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous measure; it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure which was beating against the old house like a rising tide. The band blew louder trills from their little flutes; their violins sent forth more swooning notes. Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the gilding and the paintings, the lusters exhaled a living heat and a great glow of sunlight, while the crowd of guests, multiplied in the surrounding mirrors, seemed to grow and increase as the murmur of many voices rose ever louder. The couples who whirled round the drawing room, arm about waist, amid the smiles of the seated ladies, still further accentuated the quaking of the floors. In the garden a dull, fiery glow fell from the Venetian lanterns and threw a distant reflection of flame over the dark shadows moving in search of a breath of air about the walks at its farther end. And this trembling of walls and this red glow of light seemed to betoken a great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of an ancient honor was cracking and burning on every side. The shy early beginnings of gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the vocal expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival. Now the rift was growing; it was cracking the house and announcing approaching downfall. Among drunkards in the slums it is black misery, an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it is the madness of drink which empties the wretched beds. Here the waltz tune was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly ignited ruins of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen, stretched her lithe limbs above the dancers’ heads and sent corruption through their caste, drenching the hot air with the ferment of her exhalations and the vagabond lilt of the music.
On the evening after the celebration of the church marriage Count Muffat made his appearance in his wife’s bedroom, where he had not entered for the last two years. At first, in her great surprise, the countess drew back from him. But she was still smiling the intoxicated smile which she now always wore. He began stammering in extreme embarrassment; whereupon she gave him a short moral lecture. However, neither of them risked a decisive explanation. It was religion, they pretended, which required this process of mutual forgiveness, and they agreed by a tacit understanding to retain their freedom. Before going to bed, seeing that the countess still appeared to hesitate, they had a business conversation, and the count was the first to speak of selling the Bordes. She consented at once. They both stood in great want of money, and they would share and share alike. This completed the reconciliation, and Muffat, remorseful though he was, felt veritably relieved.
That very day, as Nana was dozing toward two in the afternoon, Zoé made so bold as to knock at her bedroom door. The curtains were drawn to, and a hot breath of wind kept blowing through a window into the fresh twilight stillness within. During these last days the young woman had been getting up and about again, but she was still somewhat weak. She opened her eyes and asked:
“Who is it?”
Zoé was about to reply, but Daguenet pushed by her and announced himself in person. Nana forthwith propped herself up on her pillow and, dismissing the lady’s maid:
“What! Is that you?” she cried. “On the day of your marriage? What can be the matter?”
Taken aback by the darkness, he stood still in the middle of the room. However, he grew used to it and came forward at last. He was in evening dress and wore a white cravat and gloves.
“Yes, to be sure, it’s me!” he said. “You don’t remember?”
No, she remembered nothing, and in his chaffing way he had to offer himself frankly to her.
“Come now, here’s your commission. I’ve brought you my innocence!”
And with that, as he was now by the bedside, she caught him in her bare arms and shook with merry laughter and almost cried, she thought it so pretty of him.
“Oh, that Mimi, how funny he is! He’s thought of it after all! And to think I didn’t remember it any longer! So you’ve slipped off; you’re just out of church. Yes, certainly, you’ve got a scent of incense about you. But kiss me, kiss me! Oh, harder than that, Mimi dear! Bah! Perhaps it’s for the last time.”
In the dim room, where a vague odor of ether still lingered, their tender laughter died away suddenly. The heavy, warm breeze swelled the window curtains, and children’s voices were audible in the avenue without. Then the lateness of the hour tore them asunder and set them joking again. Daguenet took his departure with his wife directly after the breakfast.
Chapter XIII
Toward the end of September Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana’s that evening, came at nightfall to inform her of a summons to the Tuileries. The lamps in the house had not been lit yet, and the servants were laughing uproariously in the kitchen regions as he softly mounted the stairs, where the tall windows gleamed in warm shadow. The door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly. A faint pink glow wa
s dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the red hangings, the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their medley of embroidered fabrics and bronzes and china, were already sleeping under a slowly creeping flood of shadows, which drowned nooks and corners and blotted out the gleam of ivory and the glint of gold. And there in the darkness, on the white surface of a wide, outspread petticoat, which alone remained clearly visible, he saw Nana lying stretched in the arms of Georges. Denial in any shape or form was impossible. He gave a choking cry and stood gaping at them.
Nana had bounded up, and now she pushed him into the bedroom in order to give the lad time to escape.
“Come in,” she murmured with reeling senses, “I’ll explain.”
She was exasperated at being thus surprised. Never before had she given way like this in her own house, in her own drawing room, when the doors were open. It was a long story: Georges and she had had a disagreement; he had been mad with jealousy of Philippe, and he had sobbed so bitterly on her bosom that she had yielded to him, not knowing how else to calm him and really very full of pity for him at heart. And on this solitary occasion, when she had been stupid enough to forget herself thus with a little rascal who could not even now bring her bouquets of violets, so short did his mother keep him—on this solitary occasion the count turned up and came straight down on them. ’Gad, she had very bad luck! That was what one got if one was a good-natured wench!
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